Oxford Biomedica receives £53.5m injection from Novo Holdings
The British cell and gene therapy group Oxford Biomedica (OXB) will receive the cash offer of £53.5m (€60.64m) from Novo Holdings, a Novo Nordisk Foundation’s wholly owned holding company.
OXB’s LentiVector technology platform supports the development and commercialisation of cell and gene therapies for partners such as Novartis and Sanofi.
The company, which also works on proprietary products, is the sole manufacturer of lentiviral vectors for Novartis’ chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel).
James Miskin, OXB's CTO, had previously revealed to us that the company expects to capture 25-30% of the global lentiviral vector market by 2026.
“Oxford Biomedica is a global scientific and manufacturing leader within lentiviral vectors, one of the most established and well-validated technologies for delivering gene and cell therapies,” Robert Ghenchev, director at Novo Holdings said in a statement.
According to OXB, Novo Holdings’ investment will be used to repay the existing debt facility with Oaktree Capital Management in full and to further develop the LentiVector platform and proprietary product portfolio.
Under the agreement, Novo Holdings subscribes for 6,568,024 new ordinary shares in OXB at a price of £6.90 per share, while it also has an option to subscribe for up to a further 1,181,976 new ordinary shares in OXB by June 30th 2019.
Novo Holdings will also have the right to appoint a non-executive director to the Board of OXB.
